Wednesday, January 15, 2014

PDA Update - January 2014



Project on Defense Alternatives


Update

The Project on Defense Alternatives has long been an advocate of restraint when it comes to employing military means to foreign affairs and an advocate for investing more in non-violent means of global engagement.  Five years ago we recognized that the country's fiscal situation would force a degree of  restraint on the Pentagon  and the White House.  We turned much of our attention to work around the military budget and contributed substantially to ending the growth of military spending (at least in the near term.)

Now with the economy slowly improving and Congressional budget deadlock easing the budgetary restraints on the Pentagon are beginning to ease as well.  We will continue work on the budget, but are turning more of our attention to strategic issues and the overall military force posture which is supposed to flow from strategy, but which, of course, is always resistant to change.  In the end it is national strategy and the means accumulated to support the strategy that gets the U.S, into wars.

Strategy and force posture will be the central focus of PDA's Reset Defense Bulletin, now published bi-weekly.  Recent editions of the Bulletin can be viewed here.

The most recent Bulletin is titled Will the U.S. make needed changes to national strategy?

Should you wish to subscribe please visit this webpage: http://www.comw.org/pda/subpageRDBulletin.html  It is always easy to unsubscribe ... should you feel the Bulletin is cluttering your inbox.

This past year we also changed our institutional affiliation.  For more than twenty years we were affiliated with the Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge, MA.  A year ago we moved PDA to a larger Washington, DC-based organization, The Center for International Policy.  We are very pleased with the new affiliation.

Carl Conetta who lives in the DC area is now serving as the director of PDA's program while Charles Knight works as a non-resident Senior Fellow from his Cambridge office.

Should you wish to contact us you can email pda (at) comw.org or call the Center at (202) 232-3317.

Project on Defense Alternatives: Defense Sense – Fiscal Year 2014 Update: Options for National Security Savings (06/28/13)

Center for International Policy: Time to Reset Defense: Guidance for a More Effective and Affordable US Defense Postureconference presentations (video) (03/26/13)

Government Executive:
 Striking a New Deal on Defense  Carl Conetta and Charles Knight (02/13/13)

Project on Defense Alternatives: Reasonable Defense: A Sustainable Approach to Securing the NationCarl Conetta (11/14/12)

Project on Defense Alternatives: How does defense spending rate for job creation?Ethan Rosenkranz (06/25/12)

National Interest:  How to Pay for Wars Benjamin H. Friedman and Charles Knight (03/06/12)